Mental health facility goes into lockdown

Staff at the secure mental health facility James Nash House have placed the building into lockdown as part of a dispute with the centre's management.

The Nursing and Midwifery Federation says the action has been prompted by a recent rise in violent incidents against staff at the facility at Oakden in Adelaide's north-east.

Federation spokesman Rob Bonner says there have been at least three assaults on staff at the facility in the past few weeks, with the most recent occurring yesterday.

He says a student nurse is yet to return to the centre, which currently houses 40 patients, after she was attacked several weeks ago.

Mr Bonner says nurses are in extra danger because a duress alarm that allows them to alert other staff if they are in danger has broken.

He says nurses have asked for the alarm system to be upgraded since November.

"It either hasn't worked at all or it's sent off signals sending the supporting staff to the wrong rooms or wrong wings of the hospital, so it's been quite faulty and as a result the staff have been left without support and help.

"In a hospital like James Nash where you're dealing people who are really quite seriously mental ill, that's an extremely dangerous and volatile situation to be in."

Mr Bonner says negotiations are currently taking place.

"They're speaking with contractors today and we understand tomorrow. Hopefully that will lead to an urgent fix of the problems," he said.

"It's pretty awful though that it's taken the level of violence and aggression against staff over the last couple of weeks and the action of the nursing staff today to force what should have been appropriate and preventive action for management when they've known about this for several months."

'Extra staff'

The chief executive of SA Health, David Swan, says urgent steps are being taken to fix the alarm system.

"The equipment broke down only yesterday. There was concern about access to duress alarms during that time," he said.

"So it's only been 24 hours. We've already had a technician out there looking at the system. The upgrades that we looked at that existing system weren't as successful as we had anticipated.

"We've already started discussions with a technical consultant in this area about upgrading the equipment altogether."

He says an upgrade of the alarm system is planned but extra staff will be put on in the interim.

"What we've offered is putting on additional nursing staff to assist our existing staff and also security guards so we are taking any steps that are very important and any steps that our staff feel are required we're happy to consider," he said.